I woke up parched the other night and felt my way down from my loft to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Passing through the dark hallway, I felt something trailing against the floor and saw in the dark a short black strip hanging from the side of my foot. I gave a kick to dislodge whatever it was I had stepped on, and then felt a bite from what I had assumed was inanimate and watched in horror as the thing started writhing. I did a nice little kick-scream-run combination and then spent the next five minutes in my dark kitchen, sitting on the couch with my legs pulled safely from the floor, imagining that a deadly asp was lurking around the corner, ready to slither toward my foot the moment it touched the floor.
Relating this story the next morning, my boss and his son deducted that it was probably a forty-legger that I encountered. A second cousin once removed to the centipede, forty-leggers (not its scientific name) have a bite about as poisonous as a scorpion’s. What I got was most likely a prick from a pair of pinscers. I’ve been spending a lot of time on my tip-toes the past few days.
The annual report has been finalized and sent to the printer’s shop. The layout and design work was done by Majdi who works at a design company in Ramallah. On Friday my boss and I drove up to this thriving Palestinian metropolis and spent a good eight hours working with Majdi on the report. And we all ended up working on Saturday too, me calling Majdi and making the final corrections remotely. It was a long phone call with numerous interruptions, as I listed each minute word change or photo alignment. First Majdi got a call from his buddy. Then he had to call his mom. Then, after a few more minutes: “Margit, you’re going to hate me. But wait just a minute again. There is so much shooting outside.” After a minute he was back, explaining that lots of men with guns were shooting outside the office building. Within two minutes they had drawn nearer and I could hear the gunfire over the phone. These weren’t handguns going off--bullets were flying. “Majdi,” I said, “if you need to go to the hallway and get away from windows and crossfire, that’s okay.” “No,” says Majdi. “I have to finish the annual report.” Employee of the Week.
The Economist did its cover story on Jerusalem this past week, and the article is one of the most accurate I’ve read since I’ve been over here. Click here if you’d like to read it. It’s quite short.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Holy Week, Day by Day
It’s been an unquiet week here in Jerusalem. Holy Week for the Christians, Pesach for the Jews, and the Days of Some Serious Income for the sellers of souvenir crowns of thorns in the Old City. Richard, a driver and errand-runner at the office, was explaining the impact of Pesach on the post office schedule for the week: “Today closed. Tomorrow half day. Friday half day. Saturday half day. Sunday half day. Monday half day. Tuesday half day. Wednesday half day. And then they eat bread.” This is not entirely accurate, in regards to Passover or to the hours of the post office, but nonetheless, I’m inspired to do provide my own day-by-day account of Holy Week in the Holy Land. There’s a lot to keep track of.
Palm Sunday
The first of many processions, and one of the largest, with Palestinian Christians and non-Palestinian Christians gathering to walk the route from the Mount of Olives through Lion’s Gate of the Old City, following the route Jesus traveled on the donkey. The procession starts with a collection of youth groups in militaristic uniforms marching through the streets with flags. They’re then followed by local nuns and priests and visiting pilgrims heavy-laden with palm fronds, olive branches and cameras.
Monday
Lenten reflection
Tuesday
Lenten reflection. Augusta Victoria kindergarten egg hunt.
Wednesday
Lenten reflection. Post office closed.
Maundy Thursday
As Mark said during the evening procession, “Maundy Thursday is the one day in Jerusalem when the Protestants rule.” Not just rule, but stop traffic, which we did as we processed to the Garden of Gethsemane with the Arabic, English, German and Danish-speaking congregations of the Lutheran church. As we processed, people stuck with their language group in order to sing, each group led by someone carrying a sign reading “Arabic,” “English,” etc. Carrying a large sign reading “Danish” while marching through the Muslim Quarter can’t have been a job people were fighting over. I’m guessing their congregation drew straws.
The Garden of Gethsemane is beautiful and serene, and I plan on going back, with the required headscarf next time, to sit in the Russian Orthodox church there and hear the nuns chant in the shadowy sanctuary.
Good Friday
Another service, one which Will promised was multi-lingual but turned out to be entirely in German. Then on to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to observe the mayhem. They had police working in the church for the day to do some crowd control, holding back struggling and weeping pilgrims trying desperately to be the fourteenth person crammed into Jesus’ tomb. I saw a young priest sprint over to a small shrine to blow out a flaming mass of candles that were wilting toward the ground and threatening to singe the hair or habits of passers-by.
Fire extinguisher
The saints and journalists above
Every hour or so a different group would clog the narrow streets along the Via Dolorosa, following the 12 Stations of the Cross on their way to Holy Sepulcher. Getting through the Old City on Good Friday requires much patience and no concern for one’s personal space.
Saturday
Pick up trash around site of Easter sunrise service. Attend pre-Easter picnic. Win third place in three-legged race. Gorge on well-deserved prize of chocolate eggs.
Easter Sunday
Wake at 4:45 a.m. for the sunrise service at the new amphitheater on the LWF grounds. My first day of work here in Jerusalem I helped move rocks around in planning for the rock ring amphitheater which debuted for this service. I took the quintessential sunrise service picture:
Then was Easter brunch and then I headed down to the Old City where I caught my second service of the day, this one at the lovely Garden Tomb and preached by my godmother’s pastor from her church in London. Jerusalem tends to be a crossroads of people who know people and a prime place to play Six Degrees of Separation.
Easter Monday
Half day at the post office.
Palm Sunday
The first of many processions, and one of the largest, with Palestinian Christians and non-Palestinian Christians gathering to walk the route from the Mount of Olives through Lion’s Gate of the Old City, following the route Jesus traveled on the donkey. The procession starts with a collection of youth groups in militaristic uniforms marching through the streets with flags. They’re then followed by local nuns and priests and visiting pilgrims heavy-laden with palm fronds, olive branches and cameras.
Monday
Lenten reflection
Tuesday
Lenten reflection. Augusta Victoria kindergarten egg hunt.
Wednesday
Lenten reflection. Post office closed.
Maundy Thursday
As Mark said during the evening procession, “Maundy Thursday is the one day in Jerusalem when the Protestants rule.” Not just rule, but stop traffic, which we did as we processed to the Garden of Gethsemane with the Arabic, English, German and Danish-speaking congregations of the Lutheran church. As we processed, people stuck with their language group in order to sing, each group led by someone carrying a sign reading “Arabic,” “English,” etc. Carrying a large sign reading “Danish” while marching through the Muslim Quarter can’t have been a job people were fighting over. I’m guessing their congregation drew straws.
The Garden of Gethsemane is beautiful and serene, and I plan on going back, with the required headscarf next time, to sit in the Russian Orthodox church there and hear the nuns chant in the shadowy sanctuary.
Good Friday
Another service, one which Will promised was multi-lingual but turned out to be entirely in German. Then on to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to observe the mayhem. They had police working in the church for the day to do some crowd control, holding back struggling and weeping pilgrims trying desperately to be the fourteenth person crammed into Jesus’ tomb. I saw a young priest sprint over to a small shrine to blow out a flaming mass of candles that were wilting toward the ground and threatening to singe the hair or habits of passers-by.
Fire extinguisher
The saints and journalists above
Every hour or so a different group would clog the narrow streets along the Via Dolorosa, following the 12 Stations of the Cross on their way to Holy Sepulcher. Getting through the Old City on Good Friday requires much patience and no concern for one’s personal space.
Saturday
Pick up trash around site of Easter sunrise service. Attend pre-Easter picnic. Win third place in three-legged race. Gorge on well-deserved prize of chocolate eggs.
Easter Sunday
Wake at 4:45 a.m. for the sunrise service at the new amphitheater on the LWF grounds. My first day of work here in Jerusalem I helped move rocks around in planning for the rock ring amphitheater which debuted for this service. I took the quintessential sunrise service picture:
Then was Easter brunch and then I headed down to the Old City where I caught my second service of the day, this one at the lovely Garden Tomb and preached by my godmother’s pastor from her church in London. Jerusalem tends to be a crossroads of people who know people and a prime place to play Six Degrees of Separation.
Easter Monday
Half day at the post office.
Friday, April 07, 2006
triptych
Three things I took photos of today:
Pin-up.
I dunno. I just wouldn't use this to wash my dishes.
"I brake for speedbumps."
Pin-up.
I dunno. I just wouldn't use this to wash my dishes.
"I brake for speedbumps."
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
rainy days
“It never ends, Mah-gee,” said the gate guard Moosa last night, standing outside in the spitting drizzle when I walked by. The rain or the wind, I asked him. “The weather, the life, everything—it’s too much!”
I’m feeling in agreement this week. The winds that whip the hilltop we live on blow at a strange ferocity and howl around my tower, making me want to stay between my stone walls. The unseasonably heavy and frequent rains are still going on, flooding under my front door and keeping me typing in the office rather than at a picnic bench outside.
This Monday and last Wednesday I visited two village health clinics, medical outposts in tiny towns in the West Bank. When the program was set up in the 1950s, the towns were just small and isolated. Now they’re more or less sequestered, their farm land confiscated and their roads blocked by checkpoints. To enter Beit Liqya, the medical team and I were dropped off on the side of an abandoned road where we waited for a taxi from the town to pick us up and drive us the remaining two miles to the clinic. Our East Jerusalem van can’t drive into the West Bank Village and the West Bank taxi can’t drive out of the town limits. We loitered on the dusty roadside and the Palestinian doctor and nurses dutifully pulled out their id papers when a jeep pulled up and three Israeli soldiers sauntered over, slinging their very large guns from their backs to their fronts to their backs again, shuffling through the passports and permits. How blatant, in a situation like this, that I and the Danish podiatrist—the clear foreigners—got to stand there with our white faces, ignored by the soldiers, while the older and much more educated medical team was required to prove their right to be in their own territory. The soldiers left, the taxi arrived, and I spent the day taking photographs of chubby-cheeked children and wrinkled grandmothers getting eye exams.
Ahmed, the doctor and director in charge of the village health program has set on my shoulders a job for when I visit these villages: front seat smiler. “Margit, go to your position. Practice your smile,” he tells me as we fill up the van for the trip back to Jerusalem. The checkpoint that is unpassable with a van full of Palestinian doctors becomes a bit more soluble with an international face in the front seat. So I sit shotgun, I smile my American smile at the Israeli guards, and on all but one occasion it’s worked. That was on Monday afternoon, and rather than passing through and driving the ten minutes back to the hospital, we were told to make a U-turn and then had to drive another 40 minutes in a circuitous path through once quiet neighborhoods that have grown noisy and muddy with diverted highway traffic. Moosa is right. It’s too much and it never ends, like the ugly weather blowing around.
Something ugly: a checkpoint.
Something pretty: grandma’s needlepoint.
Have you heard? Bird flu has arrived.
I’m feeling in agreement this week. The winds that whip the hilltop we live on blow at a strange ferocity and howl around my tower, making me want to stay between my stone walls. The unseasonably heavy and frequent rains are still going on, flooding under my front door and keeping me typing in the office rather than at a picnic bench outside.
This Monday and last Wednesday I visited two village health clinics, medical outposts in tiny towns in the West Bank. When the program was set up in the 1950s, the towns were just small and isolated. Now they’re more or less sequestered, their farm land confiscated and their roads blocked by checkpoints. To enter Beit Liqya, the medical team and I were dropped off on the side of an abandoned road where we waited for a taxi from the town to pick us up and drive us the remaining two miles to the clinic. Our East Jerusalem van can’t drive into the West Bank Village and the West Bank taxi can’t drive out of the town limits. We loitered on the dusty roadside and the Palestinian doctor and nurses dutifully pulled out their id papers when a jeep pulled up and three Israeli soldiers sauntered over, slinging their very large guns from their backs to their fronts to their backs again, shuffling through the passports and permits. How blatant, in a situation like this, that I and the Danish podiatrist—the clear foreigners—got to stand there with our white faces, ignored by the soldiers, while the older and much more educated medical team was required to prove their right to be in their own territory. The soldiers left, the taxi arrived, and I spent the day taking photographs of chubby-cheeked children and wrinkled grandmothers getting eye exams.
Ahmed, the doctor and director in charge of the village health program has set on my shoulders a job for when I visit these villages: front seat smiler. “Margit, go to your position. Practice your smile,” he tells me as we fill up the van for the trip back to Jerusalem. The checkpoint that is unpassable with a van full of Palestinian doctors becomes a bit more soluble with an international face in the front seat. So I sit shotgun, I smile my American smile at the Israeli guards, and on all but one occasion it’s worked. That was on Monday afternoon, and rather than passing through and driving the ten minutes back to the hospital, we were told to make a U-turn and then had to drive another 40 minutes in a circuitous path through once quiet neighborhoods that have grown noisy and muddy with diverted highway traffic. Moosa is right. It’s too much and it never ends, like the ugly weather blowing around.
Something ugly: a checkpoint.
Something pretty: grandma’s needlepoint.
Have you heard? Bird flu has arrived.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
